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As part of the “Media Messages Matter” multiplex session during the Cape Town Congress in 2010, Nick Pollard outlined the approach used by Damaris Trust in working closely with the mainstream film industry in order to produce outreach resources.

As part of the “Media Messages Matter” multiplex session during the Cape Town Congress in 2010, Tony Watkins and Margunn Serigstad Dahle explored news and entertainment media as missiological challenges.

I enjoyed following the conversation on the threefold media challenge from Cape Town, subsequently reiterated by the 2012 Lausanne Regional Consultation on the Gospel and Media in Kristiansand. It has brought back memories of my younger years in the world of media in Denmark, Ethiopia, Geneva and Norway – some of these years were actually in Kristiansand with the International Mass Media Institute where we were deeply engaged in the trinity of awareness, presence and ministries. Since then my life and focus have moved into leadership, missiology, theology of religion and other obscure matters, but when the smell of media reaches my nostrils, I can still smell the sawdust of the circus. My small contribution to the conversation will focus on two interconnected issues: the worldview of the media and a Christian worldview; and the absolute need for Christians to be involved as salt and light.

t the Lausanne Global Consultation on Media and the Gospel in November 2013, Craig Detweiler led a thought-provoking session on the influence of the technological ‘gods’ of our digital generation. It happened to be the publication day for his book iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives (Brazos Press, 2013). Craig Detweiler is Director of the Center for Entertainment, Media, and …

I am writing this on a plane, having endured several minutes during take-off without my electronic equipment turned on. But as soon as the seatbelt sign went off, my laptop went on and I got down to work, slightly frustrated that so few flights have WiFi yet. I’m not the only one who waited for the signal to spring into action. Around me, many passengers now have earphones in: some watch movies on iPads, some listen to music on iPods. A few absorb themselves in the more traditional media of newspaper and books.

Wherever we live in today’s world, information and communication technologies increasingly influence and impact our human lives, our Christian witness, and our Christian ministries. The varieties of local, global, and ‘glocal’ media messages provide complex contexts for the task of making the case for the truth of Christ in the 21st century. The missional issues related to media engagement are therefore of real significance to the global church.